Reading guide to: Pink, S.(2008) ‘An
Urban Tour: the sensory sociability of ethnographic place – making’, Ethnography 9
(2). (NB I got this through an interlibrary loan from the
British Library - the electronic version had neither page numbers nor a
bibliography)

[Another claim to be doing ethnographic
place making by
walking, rather similar to Pink 2007, and Pink
2008b – blame the RAE?This one is a
bit more explicit about some
philosophical threads that might underpin the approach].

An urban walk was undertaken in Mold [why?Why not Orlando, Paris, London, or somewhere
that tourists go?].The tour was
organized by local residents keen on the Slow City movement, an
offshoot of the
movement for Slow Food, a conservational movement, aimed at the
protection of
the local environment.

Ethnography can be seen as a form of place
making.Casey is cited again on the
importance of place
as fundamental and structuring when it comes to meaning.There is also a link to Merleau-Ponty’s notion
of ‘being in the world’, which invokes gathering meanings together.The sense of place is transitory, but there
are paths, which constitute individual meanings and embody them.There may be differences in terms of gender,
generation, class or race however.Researchers
are also embodied.The researcher and
subject are co-present, place is
similarly
experienced, we are part of a universal place making process [quite a
lot turns
on this, but it follows from what was just said that social
similarities or differences
are going to be important here.There
may be a common commitment to slow city politics here which also helps
people to
understand each other?]

Walking and eating becomes an important way
to experience
the place.This was recognized in work
on the flaneur, but this work over emphasized by visual and the gaze,
when what
is required is a multi sensory form of experience.Walking is a matter of route creation.Eating is also important and leads to a new
level of awareness [Pink compares the experience of drinking coffee in
a local
cafe with drinking coffee in a multinational chain]. Stoller is also mentioned.The combination of walking and eating is
important for the slow city movement as well [so is the argument here
about
developing a political awareness, or is it based on theoretical or
methodological commitments?]

De Certeau is
mentioned, and criticised again for being too
binary, and ignoring diverse forms of power [there might even be an
implicit
reference to Foucault here, which would be rather ironic, given de
Certeau’s
superb critique of Foucault’s method].The
Mold activists imagined a new town, showing the power
of
imagination.However, the only way to
know about collective imagination and its effects is to experience it
yourself,
rather than relying on written materials.The
researcher needs embodied practices as well as verbal
projections [Can
these ever be separated in practice, though?Do
embody practices go on in silence?].

The fieldwork was undertaken by walking
round the town with
a slow city activist, who arranged the schedule and provided a map.The importance of journeys is reasserted, and
some strange inclusion of snippets of gossip appear [again a realist
technique?Designed to give an illusory
co-presence?]
She audio recorded conversation [not video on this occasion?] and
offers us
quotes.However, all the senses were
engaged – for example she noticed lots of things going on in the cafe
‘The [traditional]
coffee helped me to feel situated in this [traditional] cafe context’
and this
is illustrated by a photograph.The new
market
was visited –‘a planned context for the unfolding of new socialities
and new
sensory experiences’, especially when compared with the old farmers’
markets.The mayor was interviewed, and ‘I
felt
compelled to continue our search for a suitable view to photograph
through the
trees’ [gripping and insightful stuff!].

The trip was running late so ‘Our
commensality took on a new
rythmn as we hurried…And dashed off’.They kept their jackets on.She did video the big hall, and she can now ‘imagine
[the rooms] in action’.She drank a
‘cappuccino
served with a Belgian – style biscuit…[and
consumed]…a cold
panini’ [real immersion in experiences then!] .She
tried to get attuned.She combined
rational with multi sensorial
memories.She does structure of the
memories using ‘themes and questions’ but the emplaced memories are
more vivid.[that is, more realistic?].

She wants to understand the members of the
slow city, so she
tried to go slow herself.Of course the
guides mediated rather than represented the town, but she actually made
the
place as a slow place.

This was not a visit specifically for
research [so the
article arose from some need to cram one in the RAE?Why did Ethnography
publish it?].She went as a participant.She’s not suggesting that she is often the
transferable method.She simply shared
experiences [including sharing gazes].Ethnography
can be seen as a pathway which gathers, and we
must remember
how we are emplaced.

[Very confused and rather moralistic and
incantatory my view.A marvellous example
of the jargon of
authenticity.It’s also a classic piece
by a famous professor who gets published whenever she writes?It’s all delightfully nostalgic and old
fashioned as well – no mention of virtual places, for example, and a
deliciously naive use of camcorders and photographs.A kind of reproduction of a pleasant visit to
a country town in Wales, but talked up horribly with fashionable stuff
about
journeys, and infected with the discovery by the ageing middle classes
of their
bodies.I didn’t like it!]

Pink (2008b),which I have not processed but
which you can
easily read online, repeats the same sort of points again, this time
following a visit to Diss in Norfolk, with slight
inflections --e.g. she says de Certeau is too binary because of his
commitment to the tactics of the powerless, whereas she is more
interested in the walking undertaken by specific groups of activitists,
like slow city people and the disabled. She also begins to get aware a
little bit of the ways in which videos and films structure places and
meanings as
well, a move away from some of the naivety of her own visual recording
activities: she can see how the two documentaries on Diss do this, but
is still unable to develop the criticisms very far or apply it to her
own work in any detailed or reflexive way.